Jain Journal 1985 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 17

80
Guna is described in the Mahānāradakaṣṣapa-jātaka22 as "an ignorant, naked, wretched and blindly foolish Ajivika" (ajanantam naggabhoggam nissirikam andha-bālam ājivikam). The term 'nagga-bhoggam' is interpreted as 'one whose goods are nakedness' in the Dictionary of the Pali Text Society, but the word, as aptly suggested by A. L. Basham, would be taken to mean 'one naked and crippled'.23 The Ajivikas at the stage of initiation seem to have made themselves eligible to bear out these painful ordeals. One has to bear up all these intolerable and difficult practices before going to be accommodated in the organisation. Children and women were not debarred to get entry into the order provided they showed their forbearance in accepting various kinds and/or degrees of
penances.
The Ajivikas performed several extremist type of austerities which sometimes lead to put an end of the life. The description of some of the horrible and rigid penances, like raising his hands high in the sunshine, rejection of six consecutive meals, living on mere beans or rice-gruel (kulmaşa) and on one sip of water in the beginning of asceticism, were performed by Gosala for acquiring the power of fiery energy at the end of six months.24
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But the most interesting point as known from the Tittira-jätaka,25 is the introduction of secret magical rites of a repulsive tantric type. A vivid description of the practice of mysterious secret rites of the Ajivikas is to be found in the Vayu-purana.20
"Roads, rivers, fords, caityas, trees, highways-piśācas (goblins) have entered all these places. Those unrighteous people the Ajivas, as ordained by the gods, are the confusers of varṇa and ātrama, a people of workmen and craftsmen. Goblins are the divinities in their sacrifices, which they perform with wealth (stolen) from beings who resemble the immortals (i.e. brahmanas) and (gained by acting as) police spies, and with much other ill-gotten wealth, and with honey, meat, broth, ghee, sesamum, powder, wine, spirits, incense, greens, krtara (boiled sesamum and rice), oil, fragrant grass (? bhadra), treacle, and porridge. The Lord Brahma
22 Jataka, vi, pp.219 ff.
23 A. L. Basham, History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas, pp.104-105.
24 Bhagavati-sutra, 15.1.543; in the Lomahamsa-jataka (i.p.390) the Ajivika asceticism is depicted by way of the description of the practice of severe penances by Bodhisattva born as an Ajivika.
25 Tittira Jataka, III, pp.541-42.
26 Vayu-purana, 69, 284-88.